The release of the new
Star Wars film will mark another chapter in the career
of director George Lucas.
Episode III: Revenge of the Sith is likely to be a box
office hit to match the five previous Star Wars movies,
which have generated nearly $3.5bn (£1.84bn) in
global ticket sales.
Having already made a number of
films regularly voted top of movie fan lists, Revenge
of the Sith will maintain his status as one of the most
popular directors in cinema history.
Lucas was born on 14 May 1944 in
the California town of Modesto.
His parents wanted him to take over
the family stationery business, but after a serious car
crash halted his dreams of becoming a racing car driver
he began studying film at the University of Southern California.
After graduating, he made a longer
version of one of his college shorts - THX 1138, released
through friend Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope
studio in 1970.
Early success
The cold and stark film of a dystopian
future got Lucas noticed while he was just 26.
Three years later, he followed it
up with the acclaimed American Graffiti, about a group
of 1950s Californian teenagers, made through his own company
Lucasfilm.
He earned a Golden Globe and five
Oscar nominations in the process and started writing Star
Wars in 1973.
Before the film's release, Lucas said:
"Rather than do some angry, socially relevant film,
I realised there was another relevance that is even more
important - dreams and fantasies, getting children to believe
there is more to life than garbage and killing and all that
real stuff like stealing hubcaps.
"A whole generation was growing
up without fairytales."
Generated billions
He was not convinced it would be
a success, but he was prepared to take a risk on it -
agreeing to take a lower fee for writing and directing,
but opting to take 40% of the rights to the film's merchandising.
Nearly 30 years later, this deal alone
has made him a billionaire.
While Star Wars set the box office alight - others were
less keen on it. At a preview screening, fellow director
Brian De Palma said of the evil Stormtroopers: "Who
are these guys, dressed up like the Tin Man from Oz?"
But Steven Spielberg loved it, and after the release
of the second Star Wars film - the Empire Strikes Back
- Lucas co-wrote and executive-produced Spielberg's Indiana
Jones series.
Lucas spent the 1980s in relative seclusion, building
up his Skywalker Ranch, a 6,000-acre site just north of
San Francisco which houses the director plus the different
arms of his Lucasfilm empire.
Directorial return
It includes the pioneering Industrial
Light and Magic, acknowledged as one of the film industry's
most important technical pioneers. Lucas, whose marriage
to wife Marcia broke up in 1983, pulled back from directing
The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of The Jedi. He returned to the camera in the
late 1990s for the first Star Wars prequel, The Phantom
Menace, which took a record breaking $28.5m in North America
on its opening day in May 1999. Star Wars' success has
enabled Lucas to have an influence far beyond sci-fi fans.
His THX spin-off aims to set a single
standard for sound and vision presentation in cinemas
while Industrial Light and Magic technicians work across
Hollywood, including Pearl Harbor and the Harry Potter
series.
Critics attack Lucas for making
"dumb" films, yet he insists Star Wars has done
the wider movie industry a great service.
Peers' recognition
He points out that the cinema chains
who made money from Star Wars created multiplexes, giving
art-house directors more screens to show their films on.
"So, in a way, I did destroy
the Hollywood film industry, only I destroyed it by making
films more intelligent, not by making films infantile."
Lucas, who keeps a relatively low
profile compared to many contemporaries, has had his achievements
acknowledged by his peers.
Last October it was announced that
Lucas would receive the American Film Institute's lifetime
achievement award this June.
"He has advanced the art of
the moving image like few others, and in the process has
inspired a new generation of film-makers around the world,"
said Howard Stringer, AFI chairman of trustees.Last month
Lucas told a fans' convention that he did not worry about
the reception received by his movies.
"That's not my job, to make
people like my movies," he said. "They either
like them or they don't. That's completely out of my hands."
With two Star Wars TV series reportedly
planned, the saga is set to continue.
